The present disclosure relates to electronic communications via online communities, for example, social networks. In particular, the present disclosure relates to a system and methods for automatically detecting temporal music trends in online communities or services and automatically generating recommendations for users of the social networks to facilitate sharing of music.
Music is a social phenomenon and people with music interests and tastes that are similar often enjoy the same music. Friends typically introduce each other to latest trends in music. With the popularity and use of electronic communications increasing dramatically in recent years, people share music with their friends and others, either by email, social networks, short message service (sms) or the like. To share music preferences by email, a person can simply identify a music link and paste it into an email to others with whom they wish to share their music interests. Alternatively, people can copy a link to a track that they enjoy or even an entire playlist and paste it into user accounts in an online community or service. Some social networks have user interfaces that are configured with buttons, for example, to designate a “share” function, to facilitate user sharing of information including music. Yet other social networks have integrated with music provision services to facilitate purchase and sharing of streaming music between users of the social networks.
Google Music offered by Google Inc., of Mountain View, Calif., is a venue to connect artists and their music directly with their fans. Users can upload their entire music libraries to Google's servers, making tunes available for streaming from any browser to Android-based devices, such as a phone, a tablet, or Google TV. Google has a streaming music service that lets consumers find, purchase, and share music and songs from record labels by entities that authorize such sharing. Google Music automatically synchronizes users' entire music libraries across all of their devices from a cloud network, so users do not have to worry about connecting cables to make uploads or downloads. Users may purchase single songs or entire albums from their computer, Android smartphone, or tablet, to instantly add them to their Google Music libraries. Yet another service offered by Google Inc., is Google Plus, which has a recommendations engine for using a friend's selections to make music discoverable. It allows friends to stream music from one another, for an entire album or share a specific track with a friend. All these service require a user's direct input to initiate any sharing of music.
With the ongoing trends in electronic communication, it would certainly be beneficial to find better ways to detect music trends and automatically generate recommendations based on them.